The explosion of software-defined storage has been crucial to the converging or leaning of IT in the past few years. What these new storage methods make possible for businesses and organizations is an area of increasing interest.

“The role of hardware has changed,” said Chris Farey, cofounder and CTO for StorMagic, a software-defined storage provider.

The need for expensive external boxes and loads of disks no longer prohibits companies that desire high-performance data storage, Farey told Stu Miniman, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team. Now, he said, “You can put together some pretty impressive high-performance systems with maybe just a small amount of flash storage and just a small number of spindles of conventional hard disks,” he added.

Data here, there, and everywhere

The new software-defined storage allows data to be moved to the edge, analyzed, and manipulated there to accomplish tasks with unprecedented agility and speed. Diverse businesses and operations from retail stores to oil rigs and windmills are learning to analyse data at the edge to make improve customer experience, increase revenue, improve safety, and more.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s on-site event coverage.

Photo by SiliconANGLE